Appendix B:
Study Questions

Note that some of these materials were written about young people,
when most of the people recruited and having left cults were young. The
cults now include all age groups. Much of this material is still applicable
and to all ages.

Please remember these questions and answers are simply a learning aid.
This is not a test to determine your worth. Become aware of any
all-or-nothing reactions you may have to this learning process and adjust
such expectations.

``Coming Out of the Cults'' (Singer, 1979)

1. Why did Singer and Miller conduct discussion groups?

2. When did participants report they joined cults?

3. What are the thirteen difficulties Singer
describes that can affect
people who leave a cult?

4. How does this information pertain to you?

Youth, Brainwashing and the Extremist Cults,
Chapter 8 (Enroth, 1977)

1. More than anything else, what are the young
people who pursue
cults today involved in?

2. What are the eight elements Enroth outlines that
lead to the
transformation of personality and thinking?

3. How does this information pertain to you?

``Kids 'n' Cults'' (Swope, 1980)

1. What are the three interwoven concepts of utopian
literature in
Europe and the American colonies?

2. What was the shocking conclusion Swope came to
after meeting
with 125 young adults from different cults?

3. What are the six characteristics of the people
who join cults?

4. How many characteristics need to be present for
recruitment to
be effective?

5. What is the key to being recruited?

6. How does this information pertain to you?

Influence (Cialdini, 1984)

1. When are we most likely to accept the actions of others as
correct?

Answer the following statements TRUE or FALSE. If a question is
FALSE, what is the correct answer?

1. Some potential for extremes exists within everyone. (T/F)

2. Loaded Language is the most basic feature of
thought reform.
(T/F)

3. Milieu Control seeks to establish control over
the individual's
communication with the outside world and with himself. (T/F)

4. The pressure of milieu control causes the
individual to close
down as he is deprived of external information and inner
reflection. (T/F)

5. The mystique of the group makes manipulating others and
oneself, no matter how bizarre or painful, mandatory. (T/F)

6. The Demand for Purity allows plenty of room for every
expression and idea. (T/F)

7. Ideological totalists are able to use the
universal tendencies
toward guilt and shame as emotional levers for their controlling
and manipulating influence. (T/F)

8. The Cult of Confession is a vehicle for personal
purification, an
act of symbolic self-surrender and of exposure which makes it
almost impossible to attain a reasonable balance between worth
and humility. (T/F)

9. To the totalist the Sacred Science is one of
several moral visions
for the ordering of human existence. (T/F)

10. The clichÈs of totalist language become the start
and finish of any
ideological analysis. (T/F)

11. The effect of totalist language is the
constriction of human
thought and emotion. (T/F)